A former WestJet Airlines vice-president was acting on his own when he accessed an Air Canada website in a series of actions that provoked a corporate-espionage lawsuit, WestJet says in its most recently filed court document.

The alleged activities of Mark Hill, a WestJet co-founder who resigned as vice-president on July 14, “if they occurred, were conducted without the knowledge or consent of WestJet,” the Calgary-headquartered airline said in a revised statement of defence filed earlier this month.

“Hill, not WestJet, accessed the site manually. If there were analyses or reports prepared from the information on the website, Hill, not WestJet, performed the analysis and prepared the reports.”

However, Air Canada, which filed suit in April and is seeking $220 million from WestJet, issued a statement saying the amended defence and counterclaim “is entirely without merit and represents a further attempt to divert attention from their corporate espionage scheme” WestJet contends that the website, which enabled current and former Air Canada employees to book free travel, was not confidential and that any information gleaned from it would not have enabled WestJet to obtain the competitive advantages Air Canada alleges in its lawsuit.

In fact, WestJet states, airlines routinely monitor the number of customers on each others’ flights to determine their traffic loads, and “competitors often freely exchange this information to ease the task of counting passengers.”

WestJet’s amended statement of defence and counterclaim followed a statement by its president, Clive Beddoe, in which he apologized to employees and shareholders over the matter and said: “Clearly I have to take responsibility for this event as I should have known what Mark Hill was doing.”

Some observers saw Beddoe’s statement as an indication a settlement of the litigation was in the works, but in its statement Air Canada said it “looks forward to hearing in open court WestJet’s explanation for improperly accessing Air Canada’s confidential employee website nearly a quarter of a million times over a 12-month period.”

Hill has acknowledged accessing the website by using an access code held by co-defendant Jeffrey Lafond.